Eurostar was hit with further weather-related woes today when another train was stranded in the Channel tunnel for more than an hour.

Several trains were cancelled because of freezing temperatures and the company was forced to offer full refunds or exchanges to all passengers who were due to travel.

The affected train left Brussels at 8.05am local time and was due to arrive at London St Pancras about two hours later. It had to be towed out of the tunnel by a service engine.

As a result, three subsequent trains that had left Paris, London and Brussels were turned back. Passengers on the 8.07am Paris-London train stranded in Calais said they were told they could take a ferry to England or return to Paris.

A spokeswoman for Eurostar said the stranded train was towed to Ashford and passengers were transferred on to a train for London that arrived at 12.19pm. It is not known why the train broke down but further details are expected to be released this afternoon. Breakdowns in December were caused by heavy snow.

The stranded train quickly had a knock-on effect and by the early afternoon Eurostar was advising passengers whose travel was not essential to rebook their tickets or claim a full refund. A spokeswoman said passengers making essential trips should check in as normal but services could be cancelled or delayed.

Angry travellers at the Gare du Nord complained that little information about the disrupted service had been given. The French journalist and commentator Agnès Poirier, speaking from the station's waiting lounge, said a "huge" queue had formed outside the Eurostar entrance and there were few staff to answer queries. "The Eurostar staff are very kind and sympathetic but their knowledge is very limited, they don't seem to be getting any feedback from the head office," she said.

There were familiar scenes at St Pancras in London, with long disgruntled queues snaking through the station. Passengers waiting in freezing temperatures were told a limited service would resume this afternoon.

Standing in the queue, Kylie Bainbridge, 23, from Letheringsett in Norfolk, said Eurostar had communicated badly and failed to prioritise their customers. "I would never use Eurostar again, just because of the hassle and the way they have dealt with us," she said. "They should have learned from what happened before Christmas, but they obviously have not. They cannot help the weather, but why did another train get stranded?"

There was some comfort for Eurostar from one passenger who had attempted to get to Paris on a British Airways plane yesterday. "The Eurostar staff are 20,000 times more helpful than BA," said Sara Heft, a 28-year-old American living in Paris. Her original flight was cancelled and, after sitting in a plane on the runway for three hours, her replacement flight was also abandoned. ""I slept in the airport last night. I am just trying to get to Paris, it is not that far," she said.

The latest embarrassment for Eurostar comes after hundreds of passengers were stranded in the tunnel for hours on 18 December when five trains broke down because of electronic faults caused by snow. Thousands of passengers on either side of the Channel were stuck for several days and left wondering whether they would get home for Christmas. An estimated 75,000 passengers were caught up in the backlog.